Sunday, February 19, 2017

Confessions from Toddler School: Valentine's Day

Wow! This week has been the longest and shortest week of my life! In some ways it just flew by and in other ways I swear it's still Monday.

On Sunday I hosted a really cute little Toddler Valentine's Party for my mom group that I started on Facebook! I put out a bunch of these activities and the kids had a blast! Having all the activities prepped ahead of time really helped the week flow more smoothly!

These Foam Hearts have been amazing! We've used them for so many different activities! Our favorite right now is color sorting. I chose 3 colorsred, purple and pink. I set one of each out and then we practice color sorting (check out my IG for a video of this in action).

I say "This heart is red. Does the red go here (putting it by purple)?" Then I model shaking my head and saying no. I do the same thing by pink. When we get to red I say yes, have Cohen repeat "yes" and then we clap!

When we first started he had no clue and would only last about 2 seconds. But he brings me the hearts several times a day and now we can get all the way through the stack. He shakes his head "no" on his own and says "yes" when we get to the right color!

Repetition works ya'll!

Valentine's Themed Sensory Table:

This sensory table was a huge hit at our Toddler Valentine's Party!

What we used:

- Pink Dyed Rice

- Small Glitter Hearts

- Heart Slinkies

- Heart Rings

All of these things were found at Dollar Tree! TGFDT (Thank God for Dollar Tree)!

Giant Sticky Heart:

I made this heart on the end of our island using contact paper! We had it set up for our Valentine's Party and Cohen adds to it every day! It also spruces up our floor quite a bit. 😂

Before

After

Giant Heart Letter Matching:

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it was so cute! We used the same Foam Hearts as above and a long sheet of white butcher paper (my husband keeps it in stock for his business and we use it all the time). I put all the letters to spell Cohen and his friends names on the hearts and then traced the hearts onto the paper in the right color.

This game has so many options! Matching colors, matching letters, even as a gross motor twister kind of game! The possibilities are endless!

Admittedly this activity was way above Cohen's pay grade so we used it to continue our color matching!

Torn Paper Heart:

This was our super easy and relatively mess free art project for the week! I provided some Valentine's colored scrap paper for Cohen to tear (fine motor) and glue onto this cute little heart template I found from Learning with Letty. You can find this free template here. Cohen thought it was more fun to watch me tear the paper (have you seen that video of the baby giggling hysterically while the dad rips paper, yeah, it was like that haha). But just look at how focused he is!

I love how it turned out so much that I decided to keep it in his little art binder!

Lacing Hearts:

We used our Foam Hearts again for this fine motor activity! I took a hole punch and made these little lacing boards for Cohen! He loved practicing weaving the ribbons in and out. These are great too for on the go! We've been taking them in the car with us since our car seat is something that can be used to torture prisoners for information... or so he seems to think.

Outings this week:

none - We're still getting over a minor cold this week so we didn't go on many fun baby outings. Our Toddler Valentine's Party was our socialization this week :)